Skip this if you don’t like cycling. 

It seems that the UCI is finally cleaning it’s act up, and banning a lot of the leading riders for Le Tour. Ullrich, Basso, Sevilla, Beloki, Gutierrez have all been linked with the doping / blood transfusion network in Spain, as have the already banned Heras and Hamilton.  Ullrich (arguably cycling’s biggest talent) has been dropped from his team, and so might Basso, who just won the Tour of Italy, and was favourite for the GC at le tour.

I’m kinda glad that this has all finally been exposed, but at the same time gutted that we’re not going to see an Ullrich/Basso showdown.  EPO / Blood transfusions don’t instantly make you faster, they just allow you to train harder and suffer more.  In a perverse kind of way it is more exciting seeing le tour when you know half the riders are doping; you can see that these riders are pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. They may have blood like treacle and enlarged hearts, but fuck it, they can cycle up hills fast.

All this asks the question that as doping gives you a good 20% advantage over your rivals, how did a clean Lance Armstrong manage to beat a supposed doped Ullrich / Basso, and a doping Hamilton / Heras / Millar / Rumsas?

(Assuming no Basso) Vinokourov to win, Valverde second, and Millar or Zabriskie for the prologue.